I've toured many theatres around the world almost always bringing our trusty 520i or 300-series consoles. Only the theatres where they have a Strand desk themselves, we usually don't bother to bring our desk. The only thing is that I experienced so many theaters that didn't update their desk. They were told by their dealers that it was a quite difficult operation and one could loose all their showfiles.
The result was that they kept working with old software and I couldn't play my disks (because I wasn't allowed to simply update their desk, because it was quite a difficult operation, etc.).

I understand that a lot of dealers make a little extra money on these services, but could there be anything to make people update their desks frequently? A pop-up once a month that says check our website, or for connected desks a pop-up when there actually is an update. Or would that be annoying? Or are there any dealers that have a more valid argument for having to update the desks themselves? John?

In many respects, getting these guys to upgrade themselves does have advantages:
- they get used to the process and learn how to upgrade and rollback
- they get used to being a bit proactive with manging their systems

Conversely, it does give me an excuse to talk to them from time to time.

Prior to the invention of this website, I used a google group to post changes and ideas. Found that it was good at getting info out, but these guys are not very interactive on this forum.

So I would suggest a simple email subscription service that users can put their address into to get update notifications. This new forum can handle file uploads and ideas discussions. The Email subscription can be followed up by local distributors. Maybe the email subscription is sorted by locality, with the "reply to" address on notifications pointing back tot he local point of contact for Strand. I would also include in the user agreement a point something like:
- you agree to your email being given to the local Strand agent for your area

That person would then be able to contact that group (and deal with any local "SPAM" laws for that region).

JohnGrimshaw wrote:In many respects, getting these guys to upgrade themselves does have advantages:
- they get used to the process and learn how to upgrade and rollback
- they get used to being a bit proactive with manging their systems

Good point here that bares inforcing. When users d/l the upgrade to d:\ and re-boots, when they're done, the u/g is in d:\SavedInstalls. As the systems gets more mature, there will be a history of s/w version in that directory. At any time, they will be able to drag and drop any version back to d:\, reboot and they're off to the races. Going back and forth between versions is no issue.

TaineGilliam wrote:Does this mean proper upgrade/downgrade of tile firmware is now handled by the software install? In the past a downgrade sometimes presented "issues".

To my knowledge, the only issues that should be presented by a downgrade is saving a show in a newer version and trying to read it in an older version. In that case, you may have problems if the show file format changed in the newer version since the older version won't know about the change. Newer software should always be able to read older shows.

TaineGilliam wrote:Does this mean proper upgrade/downgrade of tile firmware is now handled by the software install? In the past a downgrade sometimes presented "issues".

I'll try again... Mostly downgrading the tiles should work ok... but should be unnecessary since there has been no changes to the tile software interface, only minor tweaking to the firmware for a variety of obscure issues that cropped up.

I encountered a Classic Palette user who downgraded from v10.0.1 to v3.4.15 .

Why-? to get his HHR working again.

He discovered the tiles would not boot in v3.4.15. Upgraded back to v10- tiles would not boot. I had to talk the user through installing v10.0.1OLE, and activating HCengine. It took more time for the guy to download the OLE than to actually perform a manual firmware upgrade.

If he managed to get his HHR operational? No status, he was just glad the desk was up again.